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Reddit Moderators Shut Down Parts of Site Over Employee’s Dismissal

34 points by kanamekun 11y ago

Johnie 11y ago
When a company is so dependent on community created content or work, the company needs to nurture and be in touch with that community. What seems to have happened with Reddit in recent times is that the company has drawn further away from the community and taken it for granted as they seek to monetize the content. Take for example r/IAMA. It was a community created subreddit that became quite popular. Once it became successful, the company seemed to try to take greater ownership of it by directing the process themselves. After the recent scandal, they created a dedicated AMA@reddit.com account to coordinate AMAs. The mods have instead created AMAVerify@gmail.com to own the process separate from the company. The current leadership of Reddit really does not understand the community and the fine implicit agreement between the community and the host. This is going to make a great case study in the future on how to manage the relationship with user generated content sites.
- slimsag 11y ago
  Totally agree. From what I gather thus far it seems like Reddit wants control of their main content base provided _by the users_ so that they can monetize it and push e.g. ask-me-anythings as ads (AMAs as a service?). Reddit has literally tried to rip control of the mods right out from underneath them, it's ludicrous. See e.g. /r/IAMA mod /u/firedrops asking: > Can you share the contact info with us? At this point it might simplify things if we handle it. Reddit admin /u/kn0thing responding with: > There's nothing to simplify, we have the relationship and we'll let you know the next steps. From: https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/3c4x6h/leaked_conversation_from_kn0thing_and_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/3c4x6h/leaked...
- dbpokorny 11y ago
  > This is going to make a great case study in the future on how to manage the relationship with user generated content sites By providing members of the general public with quality news aggregation and community management tools, Reddit has thrown a wrench into the gears of public relations, which today still resembles the model Edward Bernays outlined back in the 1920s. (Aside: I highly recommend "Crystallizing Public Opinion" for anyone who cares about PR. It is sill relevant after 90 years.) For decades there was a gaping chasm between the general public and public figures, their representatives, and little need to revolutionize the field. Today that chasm isn't closing gradually; it's collapsing with enormous force. The bubble is bursting. On Reddit, it just doesn't matter how much money you have or how much you've invested in the community or how much perceived legitimacy you have outside Reddit; anytime you make a comment, you're throwing yourself to the lions. Lions who upvote the most caustic, brutal, and incisive questions they can come up with, focusing the community's attention and demanding more of public figures in a way no one could have predicted in 1995 or even 2005. Do you know what happens when you type "reddit new york times" into Google? The top result is /r/nytimes. As a subreddit, it is essentially dead. Do you think it would be dead if the New York Times did not have its own user-generated commenting system? Do you think the New York Times would like to remain in control of its own user-generated commenting system? Of course it would. The point I'm arguing is that Reddit, by its very nature, has helped push the New York Times to adopt a policy of accepting user comments, and many other news sources have followed suit. Of course this point is impossible to prove, but even if there is merely a grain of truth to it, the implications are that those who own the news business are no longer living in a unidirectional media world. The larger argument is that Reddit (and its predecessors such as Slashdot and Digg of course; I've unfortunately unintentionally marginalized their role in this comment), by its very nature, has systematically and irrevocably altered the public's expectations for online participation and engagement. There is much more going on here than textbook case studies.
- paulhauggis 11y ago
  "The current leadership of Reddit really does not understand the community and the fine implicit agreement between the community and the host." The community doesn't understand the relationship they have with the owners of the site. The owners have final say in the sub-reddits and they made it pretty clear when they forced the sub-reddits back to public, circumventing all of the changes to private. "This is going to make a great case study in the future on how to manage the relationship with user generated content sites." Reddit is really a terrible example of anything progressive. It's really a form of social regression. Witch hunts, bullying, silencing, and bigotry toward anything that's not liked and no acceptance or tolerance. Even look at Pao. When it was thought she was fighting for women's rights, she was looked at as a great person and an asset to the community. Now, after not even knowing all of the facts, she is enemy #1. If this were all just for entertainment, it would be fine. However, it actually destroys lives, businesses, and careers. HN is going the same way. 5 years ago, it was a place for intelligent and open discussions away from political correct nonsense. But it's not the same anymore. Opposing opinions are down voted immediately instead of discussed and bigotry is accepted, as long as it's against groups of undesirables. IE: religious, conservatives, or Republicans. It pretty much fits the definition of fascism.
chernevik 11y ago
Guess the Jackson AMA is one for the memory hole.
edgyswingset 11y ago
Reddit under Ellen Pao simply feels different. The site often times feels a hell of a lot more like a cute puppy picture aggregator than anything else. The more niche subreddits (especially programming-related) are just as they always have been, but it's gotten to the point where I barely ever look at what's happening under /r/all anymore.
- notatoad 11y ago
  I'm not sure you can entirely blame management for that. As reddit has grown, it has transitioned to focus more and more on facebook-style "let me tell you a story about my day" sort of posts, where the aim of submitting content is to get attention from others rather than to inform others. This seems to be a fairly common trend as online communities move to the mainstream, the fact that Ellen Pao is in charge for it is just coincidence.
- agildehaus 11y ago
  I only became a Redditor during the Great Digg Migration, and my account is 3x older than /u/ekjp. I think the problem is that they hired someone who had never really used or cared about the site.
  - Johnie 11y ago
    This is exactly it. You can't have someone lead an organization that doesn't embody the product. Ellen needs to read the Southwest case study on how the ceo made southwest focus on both the employees as well as the consumer.
twoodfin 11y ago
Not to put too fine a point on it, but isn't it more likely than not at this point that the AMA admin was dismissed for some markedly embarrassing cause? Otherwise, why wouldn't we have heard a full story?
mmanfrin 11y ago
Reddit uproar over the past few weeks has been pretty maddening. The closure of some hateful subreddits was a long time coming, and yet a very vocal contingent of the community took it upon themselves to brigade the entire site, and to spawn a racist 'Chairman Pao' meme. This uproar has a bit more legitimacy, and I think a lot of mods have right to be mad over not being told about Victoria's firing/layoff/whatever it was (we don't actually know) -- but the response has been a grab bag of assumptions and conspiracy theories. Anonymous Quora posts were taken as gospel; assumptions about what decisions leaders at Reddit made were rampant and then soon themselves became the defacto explanations of what was going on -- without any shred of evidence. I sympathize with the mods, and think that Victoria's departure hurts mightily the entire IAmA community; but I cannot support the response so far. Go to reddit and click on 'All', and then 'Rising' at the top (warning, some stuff will be NSFW) -- look at the unbelievable vile the 'community' is spewing.

34 points by kanamekun 11y ago

When a company is so dependent on community created content or work, the company needs to nurture and be in touch with that community. What seems to have happened with Reddit in recent times is that the company has drawn further away from the community and taken it for granted as they seek to monetize the content. Take for example r/IAMA. It was a community created subreddit that became quite popular. Once it became successful, the company seemed to try to take greater ownership of it by directing the process themselves. After the recent scandal, they created a dedicated AMA@reddit.com account to coordinate AMAs. The mods have instead created AMAVerify@gmail.com to own the process separate from the company. The current leadership of Reddit really does not understand the community and the fine implicit agreement between the community and the host. This is going to make a great case study in the future on how to manage the relationship with user generated content sites.

slimsag 11y ago
Totally agree. From what I gather thus far it seems like Reddit wants control of their main content base provided _by the users_ so that they can monetize it and push e.g. ask-me-anythings as ads (AMAs as a service?). Reddit has literally tried to rip control of the mods right out from underneath them, it's ludicrous. See e.g. /r/IAMA mod /u/firedrops asking: > Can you share the contact info with us? At this point it might simplify things if we handle it. Reddit admin /u/kn0thing responding with: > There's nothing to simplify, we have the relationship and we'll let you know the next steps. From: https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/3c4x6h/leaked_conversation_from_kn0thing_and_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/3c4x6h/leaked...
dbpokorny 11y ago
> This is going to make a great case study in the future on how to manage the relationship with user generated content sites By providing members of the general public with quality news aggregation and community management tools, Reddit has thrown a wrench into the gears of public relations, which today still resembles the model Edward Bernays outlined back in the 1920s. (Aside: I highly recommend "Crystallizing Public Opinion" for anyone who cares about PR. It is sill relevant after 90 years.) For decades there was a gaping chasm between the general public and public figures, their representatives, and little need to revolutionize the field. Today that chasm isn't closing gradually; it's collapsing with enormous force. The bubble is bursting. On Reddit, it just doesn't matter how much money you have or how much you've invested in the community or how much perceived legitimacy you have outside Reddit; anytime you make a comment, you're throwing yourself to the lions. Lions who upvote the most caustic, brutal, and incisive questions they can come up with, focusing the community's attention and demanding more of public figures in a way no one could have predicted in 1995 or even 2005. Do you know what happens when you type "reddit new york times" into Google? The top result is /r/nytimes. As a subreddit, it is essentially dead. Do you think it would be dead if the New York Times did not have its own user-generated commenting system? Do you think the New York Times would like to remain in control of its own user-generated commenting system? Of course it would. The point I'm arguing is that Reddit, by its very nature, has helped push the New York Times to adopt a policy of accepting user comments, and many other news sources have followed suit. Of course this point is impossible to prove, but even if there is merely a grain of truth to it, the implications are that those who own the news business are no longer living in a unidirectional media world. The larger argument is that Reddit (and its predecessors such as Slashdot and Digg of course; I've unfortunately unintentionally marginalized their role in this comment), by its very nature, has systematically and irrevocably altered the public's expectations for online participation and engagement. There is much more going on here than textbook case studies.
paulhauggis 11y ago
"The current leadership of Reddit really does not understand the community and the fine implicit agreement between the community and the host." The community doesn't understand the relationship they have with the owners of the site. The owners have final say in the sub-reddits and they made it pretty clear when they forced the sub-reddits back to public, circumventing all of the changes to private. "This is going to make a great case study in the future on how to manage the relationship with user generated content sites." Reddit is really a terrible example of anything progressive. It's really a form of social regression. Witch hunts, bullying, silencing, and bigotry toward anything that's not liked and no acceptance or tolerance. Even look at Pao. When it was thought she was fighting for women's rights, she was looked at as a great person and an asset to the community. Now, after not even knowing all of the facts, she is enemy #1. If this were all just for entertainment, it would be fine. However, it actually destroys lives, businesses, and careers. HN is going the same way. 5 years ago, it was a place for intelligent and open discussions away from political correct nonsense. But it's not the same anymore. Opposing opinions are down voted immediately instead of discussed and bigotry is accepted, as long as it's against groups of undesirables. IE: religious, conservatives, or Republicans. It pretty much fits the definition of fascism.

chernevik 11y ago

Guess the Jackson AMA is one for the memory hole.

edgyswingset 11y ago

Reddit under Ellen Pao simply feels different. The site often times feels a hell of a lot more like a cute puppy picture aggregator than anything else. The more niche subreddits (especially programming-related) are just as they always have been, but it's gotten to the point where I barely ever look at what's happening under /r/all anymore.

notatoad 11y ago
I'm not sure you can entirely blame management for that. As reddit has grown, it has transitioned to focus more and more on facebook-style "let me tell you a story about my day" sort of posts, where the aim of submitting content is to get attention from others rather than to inform others. This seems to be a fairly common trend as online communities move to the mainstream, the fact that Ellen Pao is in charge for it is just coincidence.
agildehaus 11y ago
I only became a Redditor during the Great Digg Migration, and my account is 3x older than /u/ekjp. I think the problem is that they hired someone who had never really used or cared about the site.
- Johnie 11y ago
  This is exactly it. You can't have someone lead an organization that doesn't embody the product. Ellen needs to read the Southwest case study on how the ceo made southwest focus on both the employees as well as the consumer.

twoodfin 11y ago

Not to put too fine a point on it, but isn't it more likely than not at this point that the AMA admin was dismissed for some markedly embarrassing cause? Otherwise, why wouldn't we have heard a full story?

mmanfrin 11y ago

Reddit uproar over the past few weeks has been pretty maddening. The closure of some hateful subreddits was a long time coming, and yet a very vocal contingent of the community took it upon themselves to brigade the entire site, and to spawn a racist 'Chairman Pao' meme. This uproar has a bit more legitimacy, and I think a lot of mods have right to be mad over not being told about Victoria's firing/layoff/whatever it was (we don't actually know) -- but the response has been a grab bag of assumptions and conspiracy theories. Anonymous Quora posts were taken as gospel; assumptions about what decisions leaders at Reddit made were rampant and then soon themselves became the defacto explanations of what was going on -- without any shred of evidence. I sympathize with the mods, and think that Victoria's departure hurts mightily the entire IAmA community; but I cannot support the response so far. Go to reddit and click on 'All', and then 'Rising' at the top (warning, some stuff will be NSFW) -- look at the unbelievable vile the 'community' is spewing.